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Jack Kemp, Why Tuesday? Honorary Co-Chair Was 73

Sunday, May 3rd, 2009

Former U.S. Congressman and Why Tuesday? honorary co-chair Jack Kemp died Saturday at his home in Bethesda, Maryland. I ran into Kemp some time last year on flight to New York City from Los Angeles that was diverted to Pittsburgh because of low fuel. I even tweeted about it and I’m searching through the archives to find it. We briefly talked about Why Tuesday? and he asked that I send my best to the rest of the team. Then we were back on our way.

When our group first launched in 2005 to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act, I wasn’t a part of our team yet. In fact, there were only a small group of folks that carried the Why Tuesday? banner at that time, and they were our co-founders William B. Wachtel, Ambassador Andrew Young, and Norman J. Ornstein. Joining them as honorary co-chairs were former U.S. Senator Bill Bradley, the Democrat, and Jack Kemp, the Republican.

Before millions of Americans and others around the globe were exposed to Why Tuesday? through YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and MySpace, and even before we interviewed Barack Obama, Joe Biden, John McCain and 10 more presidential candidates for our Candidate Challenge, those gentlemen stood together in the name of fixing America’s broken voting system.

We will be forever grateful to Jack Kemp and the support he provided to our effort to make voting in America as accessible, reliable and secure as possible.